ss on that low spit running out from
the marshes. The place might well seem haunted, so many had suffered
there and died there. Poetical imagination might have evoked a piece of
sad pageantry--starving times, massacres, quarrels, executions, cruel
and unusual punishments, gliding Indians. A practical question, however,
faced the inhabitants, and all were willing to make elsewhere a new
capital city.

Seven miles back from the James, about halfway over to the blue York,
stood that cluster of houses called Middle Plantation, where Bacon's men
had taken his Oath. There was planned and builded Williamsburg, which
was to be for nearly a hundred years the capital of Virginia. It
was named for King William, and there was in the minds of some loyal
colonists the notion, eventually abandoned, of running the streets in
the lines of a huge W and M. The long main street was called Duke of
Gloucester Street, for the short-lived son of that Anne who was soon
to become Queen. At one end of this thoroughfare stood a fair brick
capitol. At the other end nearly a mile away rose the brick William and
Mary College. Its story is worth the telling.

The formal acquisition of knowledge had long been a problem in Virginia.
Adult colonists came with their education, much or little, gained
already in the mother country. In most cases, doubtless, it was
little, but in many cases it was much. Books were brought in with other
household furnishing. When there began to be native-born Virginians,
these children received from parents and kindred some manner of
training. Ministers were supposed to catechise and teach. Well-to-do
and educated parents brought over tutors. Promising sons were sent to
England to school and university. But the lack of means to knowledge for
the mass of the colony began to be painfully apparent.

In the time of Charles the First one Benjamin Symms had left his means
for the founding of a free school in Elizabeth County, and his action
had been solemnly approved by the Assembly. By degrees there appeared
other similar free schools, though they were never many nor adequate.
But the first Assembly after the Restoration had made provision for a
college. Land was to have been purchased and the building completed as
speedily as might be. The intent had been good, but nothing more had
been done.

There was in Virginia, sent as Commissioner of the Established Church,
a Scotch ecclesiastic, Dr. James Blair. In virtue of his office